Why Weird Works

In sales, marketing, blogs, being weird is the new norm and will help seal the deal.

In business, sales, blogging, and all fields of work, visualization is an important factor to capturing one’s audience. Words can only do so much to inspire people to take action, but add an inspirational graphic, and people will join the bandwagon. The key to marketing the right visuals is crafting them for the right people.

An intelligent person can get any one person to do anything; a truly brilliant person can get the masses to follow, by using persuasive words that will reach people at the emotional or logical level. If you play upon the populace’s fear, joy, logic or desire, and then place odd, yet catchy propaganda posters...the sale, campaign, world is held in your hand. Hitler was a charismatic leader, whose promises for a stronger Germany led to his initial success.

Research specifies the public tends to remember extremes, whether tremendously funny ads, or just plain senseless ones. What seems indisputable is the idea that if you want something to be remembered, the ploy is to make it impossible to be forgotten.

Psychology teaches us that people are persuaded though visuals, words, and strategy; therefore, visualization should never be undervalued. The reason weird or different is popular in sales and social media is that it is different. It’s stepping outside the norm, the proverbial box. Being different is the key to marketing, and putting weird in front of the right people often boosts sales. This is what Kira Hug discovered working her way up through her visual, weird, and popular blog.

When branding your own personality, blogging is one of the quickest ways to share your philosophies, opinions, viewpoints, all the crazy, kooky things you believe in. Blogging has that much power. For the readers who follow the yellow brick road, they can get a feel for you and your personality.

When we want to share an experience, using blog content is a fantastic way to share it and add visualizations. Writers and creative photographers can create an experience for our reader that can become part of their lives.

For the not-so-scared of heart, don’t let blogging stop you; vlogs, podcasts, anything and everything is a go in this new millennium to show the quirky, witty, multifaceted, wonderful view of who you are and what you have to offer; that unique side no one else has.

Entrepreneurs trying to take a creative stand, and young businesses just getting started wanting to catch the attention of a big client has to GO Weird. To get someone’s attention, reaching them by any way possible is the answer. Marketing these days has become unconventional, abnormal, and eye-catching. The phrase Go Big or Go Home is no longer applicable. In today’s society, it’s Go Crazy or Go Home.

It’s a wonderful thing to watch your campaign go viral, but it’s not likely to happen by accident. One specific theme that has helped the most successful marketing ads go viral is by being extremely weird. For example, when one sees an ad with a dancing Shetland pony that went viral in three days because of its silly, weird content, people are going to share it, and it’s going to become memorable. A 75-year-old grandmother shouting, “Where’s the Beef” held the nation’s attention for over a year. It proves that the weirder, the odder, the more memorable, the more effective.

Content Marketing

Some in the business field feel that content marketing is no longer the way to catch an audience’s attention. However, as some wise and creative companies have found out, weird content marketing that engages the audience works. If you aren’t using content marketing, you’re missing the boat. Even Forbes magazine’s quote of the day by Lynda Resnick, co-founder of The Wonderful Company, has realized, “it takes a nut to sell a nut.”

In fact, 64% of company marketers have realized just how well weird works for content marketing. With an average of 82% of Facebook online adults ranging in the ages of 18-29; advertisers who want to target this new generation of Millennials are turning to trendy pop culture that is hip, entertaining and weird. Take the case of Grumpy Cat. This foul faced cat meme is so recognizable, he has become the Friskies mascot, a cat food icon. If one wants to talk about branding with personality, this pouting pussy-cat wins hands down.

Digital Marketing

The age-old online marketing guidance included: Add a call to action! Use captivating or “catchy” headlines! Engage with readers! It can all begin to feel a little redundant and simplified. Something more needs to be done on top of these key marketing tools. That something is called being weird, especially in the world of digital marketing.

Close to 75% of all web users have become accustomed to side ads, and are so bored of they completely ignore them. Audiences know they are being marketed, targeted, and they either don’t care or don’t care for it. Therefore, marketing firms have come up with a few weird digital marketing trends that have created incredible results for the brands who were willing to try them out.

Gamification - by creating an ad that turned into a game, people got involved. It forced audiences to participate with the brand, and become a role of an interactive encounter that rewarded participants just for playing.

Being Funny and Weird - Consumers are more likely to re-Tweet or share something that makes them laugh. Topical humor done tastefully is a trend setter. People love when brands poke a little good-natured fun at them. Show consumers a weird and funny visual worth sharing.

Do Something Nice - A charitable contribution, sponsoring a fundraiser, or sponsoring a child in need that link with your company, are all ways to showcase to the world that your company stands for a cause. However, have your marketers do it in such a way you do not come off as a braggart. An emotional pull at those heartstrings is the first rule in persuasive campaigning, and it will show off your brand in a new light and a purposeful way.

Transparent Marketing

Integrating weird into a marketing agency commits to transparency, which means clients are informed about the services they will be receiving and the assets that legally they own. Clients are getting to be known on a personal level, and expect communication on the delivered crafted solutions. The easiest way to build relationships with clients and to build your brand is to be your truest self. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “To be great is to be misunderstood.” Nowadays, misunderstood is weird, which is the truest form of normal. Therefore, if you’re going to show off your true transparency, be true throughout your entire personality branding.

Personality Branding is all about being true to yourself. Who knew that Shakespeare would have nailed it on the head over 500 years ago. “To thine own self be true” - and those words would ring true in today’s marketing terms. Wise men and women have known this adage to be true in living their daily lives, it’s just taken the business and marketing world a few years to catch up. However, these words ring as true today as they did 500 years ago. Take that age-old advice, it’s proven to work! Be true to thyself, that wonderful, funky, weird, crazy, kooky you. Who knows? It could make you a millionaire.

An article that proves being weird, odd, or otherwise not the norm is what America wants in its marketing formats. It’s trendy, it’s memorable, it’s working.